alas, the offense on both sides was avoidable — and, to this reader’s eye, the fault of intelligentsia’s “good guys.” which isn’t to say they could have done anything about this rankled customer. but maybe they could’ve! safe to say this blog does not agree with tweeting coffee persons who think that l.a. times piece on emerging coffee snobbery was “bad” journalism.

the piece wasn’t postured as even-handed, facts-only reporting … it was first-person, opinionated viewpoint. which means only this: a person who takes the trouble to go to a high-end coffee bar on the way home was put off by the way she was treated, didn’t like how her coffee tasted — and was so frustrated by the overall experience she was spurred to ask (in writing) What It All Means.

what’s wrong with that? this person may or may not be “informed.” she may have been emotional after being told such-and-such about macchiatos. her pontifications may not be especially revelatory to specialty coffee persons. but if a thinking customer has such a reaction to one of l.a.’s acclaimed coffee joints, then i for one want to know. and if this person can write it fluently, and explain it lucidly, then i would like to read it. and what it seems like is that an intelly barista didn’t have to use an “icy tone” while refusing to make a macchiato to go. nor did he have to serve “bitter” coffee. and if neither of these things really happened — then i still want to know if that’s what it seemed like to the customer. to ignore that viewpoint is to seal one’s self in an insider’s doom machine.

my father had a similarly icy and totally rude experience at san francisco’s blue bottle (after searching out the place on my recommendation), and, at the time, i wrote that the shop appeared to have gone so endo on its coffee that it forgot how to effectively introduce people to it. a lot of customers are jerks, sure. but if a shop serves its coffee so much that it forgets to effectively serve the people who buy it, then this strikes me as a sign that the movement is ultimately self limiting. we risk liking coffee too much and people not enough.

this blog, obviously, appreciates the intelly stuff. it would be almost too fun to point out to the l.a. times writer that an intelly barista has won two straight national championships as scored primarily by, you know, taste. and yet, weirdly, i’ve had more than one friend come back from chicago or l.a. and describe an intelly beverage as “ashy” or “acrid.” this is always a bit stunning, but these are always fairly experienced consumers, people who drink regularly off my home bar and sample coffee and crema‘s stuff and know counter culture coffees fairly well — but who can’t suffer some random cup from one of the best-known bars in the country.

there’s no accounting for taste, or the occasional bad cup. but it’s certainly worthwhile to think about it. to demand that mainstream journalism always “get it” on specialty coffee — to assume it should reflect an insider’s values — is to use the same logic the tea partiers or the salon bloggers use when insisting that only their view of a political story should be covered.

People should be doing the best job that they can, working to produce the best tasting coffee they can, as often as they can.

Despite the myth of the iced-espresso story from murky coffee a couple years ago, my policy was: no espresso to go, no espresso-over-ice, no customers may change the way we make espresso (can you pull it long?), and If a customer asks for one of these, the baristas are to simply inform the customer, “i’m sorry, but we don’t serve ___, it’s against store policy.” If the customer continues to probe, “It’s just store policy.” They were not to explain the “quality reasons” for the policy.

The quality standards, including those involving what we offer and don’t offer, are about our quality principles and values. While the opportunity to “educate” is tempting, unless we know that the taste of the drink will support the standard and close to 100% of the time, it’s very, very risky. I think that the LA Times article shows what can happen when you take that risk.

So my policy at murky was that the baristas were to just blame the owner. I did not want the baristas fighting that fight with the customers, and I was happy to play the scapegoat.

ah, the murky incident. which makes me want to clarify that i’m not one of those customer-is-always-right types. that slogan seems an overcrassification of a much more subtle and complex idea of what it means to really serve a person.

sometimes the higher service would seem to be insisting on firm standards. but to what end? in my view, it’s FOR the customer — not for the proprietor. cross that line, and it seems like you’ve got a license to be tone deaf, jerky and self-aggrandizing at the expense of what a consumer may be thinking.

Try the Machiavelli Mochciatto Venti. Or a Jonah Goldberg, small. St Petersburg Times Some conservatives are angered by opinionated quotes that Starbucks puts on its cups.The Seattle coffee chain has raised some eyebrows over its ” The Way I See It ” campaign, which prints quotes from thinkers, authors, athletes and entertainers on the side of your morning machiatto. The goal, according to the company, is to foster philosophical debate in its 9,000-plus coffeehouses.

A primer

This blog isn't about espresso in a vacuum -- such milieus have their value and are listed below -- but about how sublime coffee collides with real life.